The Great Commission
Matthew 28:18-20
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Intro
During the month of November we focus several weeks on missions. We heard last week from Craig Parro from Leadership Resources, one of the missions we support. They do a great work in training up pastors and leaders around the world to preach the gospel and teach the word to their own people. His message on the 4 marks of a Great Church that looked at the church at Antioch from Acts 11 was both encouraging and convicting.
It is encouraging to see what God can do through a single church that is sold out for the Lord and teaching and preaching the word and being sacrificial in their help of other churches and sending out people to plant and assist in forming new churches.
It is convicting because we see all the more that God wants us to do than we are doing in fulfilling the great Commission and being a great church.
I look forward to Hickory being used in even greater ways during this next year.
To do that, I think that it is important that we have a clear understanding of what we are called to do in the Great Commission and that we ourselves are following the Lord in obedience so as we have opportunity to tell others, it is not only words coming out of our mouth, but we are communicating also through living our lives for the Lord.
So this week, we are going to be looking at the Great Commission.
Turn with me to Matthew 28:18-20.
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It is vital for all who are believers in Christ and part of a church to understand this mission. If we don’t know what we are supposed to do, then we will most likely not end up doing it.
And Christ thinks this is important enough for the church to make these his final words to the disciples before He ascends into heaven.
So what are Christ’s final words to His disciples and to the church?
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Matthew 28:18-20
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Pray.
With these words, Jesus lays out what every church and church member is supposed to be doing and working on. This is the Great Commission.
There are
Three Aspects to the Great Commission
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that Jesus speaks about that I think it is important that we understand.
Jesus starts out first with the Command to
Make Disciples
Matthew 28:19 – “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…”
Making Disciples means helping people to be followers of Jesus Christ.
Now, to be someone who follows Jesus Christ means that you have to believe in Jesus Christ and receive Him as Savior. That is the good news, the gospel.
Every one of us who is a believer in Jesus Christ needs to know how to clearly communicate the gospel to someone who wants to know “What must I do to be saved?”
We know to be saved that you have to believe in Jesus, but what does that actually mean?
What does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ?
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If you have been at this church for any length of time, you have heard this before.
And if you stay beyond this for any length of time, you will hear it again.
That is because believing in and receiving Jesus Christ as your Savior is the difference between an eternity in heaven and an eternity in hell.
So, if we are going to be fulfilling the commission that the Lord has for us, we have got to be making disciples by first helping them, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Now, I want to walk you through this so that you will be able to lead someone to Christ as you have the opportunity.
People get scared sometimes that they are going to mess up explaining the gospel. I want to give you a way to help you remember what to tell them.
For a person to believe in Jesus Christ and begin their journey as a disciple, they must
Believe in Who Jesus is
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Jesus is God in the flesh
John 10:22-33; 2 John 7
Believing in the deity of Christ is essential. There are some who say that Jesus never claimed to be God.
He certainly did and the Jews of the day recognized his claim that, as the Son of God, He was claiming to be God in the flesh.
John 10:22-33
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22 Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon’s Colonnade. 24 The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."
25 Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one."
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31 Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32 but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"
33 "We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
The Jews recognized his claims to be God. But not just God, but God who was also a man in the flesh.
John tells us later in
2 John 7 that
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Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Jesus is God in the flesh.
So a person must believe that Jesus is God and he became man. That is who Jesus is.
But to believe in Jesus, we must also
Believe in What Jesus Did
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What did Jesus do?
Jesus died for your sins
A person must recognize they have sinned and Jesus paid the price for their sins by dying, by shedding his blood, for them. Paul clearly gives us the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15 and one of the things that he says in essential to believe is that Christ died for our sins.
1 Corinthians 15:2-3
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2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
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Help a person to recognize that they are a sinner and because of that, they have been separated from a relationship with God and the only way to be in that relationship now is through receiving Jesus as Savior and believing that He is God in the flesh and that He paid the price for their sins by dying on the cross, AND ALSO that
Jesus resurrected from the dead
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A belief in the resurrection is essential for salvation.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul lays out the rest of the gospel.
1 Corinthians 15:4
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…Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
In fact, Paul tells us later in this chapter that without the resurrection, there would be no hope.
1 Corinthians 15:17
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if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
So, When sharing with a person that they need to believe in Jesus as their Savior, you can help them know what to believe.
Believe in who Jesus is…God in the flesh
And
Believe what Jesus did…died for your sins and rose from the dead.
A verse that I often quote encompasses all of this
Romans 10:9 says that “if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)
That is the gospel message.
Believing and Receiving Jesus as Savior is the first step in becoming His disciple. If you, as a believer in Christ, will share that truth, the truth of the gospel message with those who need Him, you will be glorifying the Lord in being a person who is helping fulfill the Great Commission.
Transition
The Great Commission does not end there though. It goes on in Matthew 28 to say to
“go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:19-20)
Another part of the Great Commission is to
Teach Disciples
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Help people Grow
This is why if you are out sharing the gospel like I hope and want to encourage each of you to be doing, you need to also be helping people grow in their knowledge of the word and in taking steps of faith.
Invite them to church
This is why you need to be inviting them to church.
In the church, people can not only hear the gospel, but grow in their knowledge of God’s word as we have people who have been gifted to teach. Getting people connected to a church
Will help them to grow in their understanding and knowledge,
Give them a place to corporately worship, and
Learn and be encouraged to live in obedience to the Lord’s commands.
Truly growing in our knowledge and learning the word of God also means that we must be doing the word of God. It is in the church that we find Jesus calling us to live out the one anothers, like, encouraging one another, admonishing one another, and Loving one another.
Learning what it means to love means learning to love those who are not always very lovable.
You know where you can find people like that sometimes? In the church.
Practicing the “one anothers” in the context of the church is going to help us learn and grow in our knowledge and ability to teach others.
So for us to be effective teachers of others, we also need to be living out those teachings.
Christianity should not be a “Do as I say, not as I do” faith. We should be able to say like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:1 – “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”
Transition
One of the first ways to help set that example is through the other part of the great commission that I skipped over.
Matthew 28:19
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…
We Make Disciples, Teach Disciples and we
Baptize Disciples
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The Great Commission, the very last things Jesus said before ascending into heaven gives the command to baptize those who have believed and have become his disciples.
Why is baptism important if we are already saved by believing in and receiving Jesus Christ as our Savior?
Well, Baptism is important for several of reasons.
Why is Baptism Important?
Baptism obeys the Command of Jesus
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Matthew 28:19
He told us in the Great Commission to do this and to encourage others to be baptized as an act of obedience. If for no other reason, we should do it because he told us to.
Another reason we should baptized is that
Baptism follows the example of Jesus
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Matthew 3:13-16
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist as He began his public ministry.
We ask the question “What would Jesus do?”
Well we know what Jesus would do (He did it, He was baptized) and we should follow His example.
Another reason baptism is important and why we should be baptized is that
Baptism symbolizes our association with Jesus.
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Baptism symbolizes what happened to us when we trusted in Christ and the Holy Spirit came and indwelt us. We were baptized by the Spirit at that point.
Paul tells us in
Romans 6:3-4 - that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
This is one of the reasons that we practice baptism by immersion.
Why do we practice baptism by Immersion?
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The picture of our death with Christ and our resurrection to live a new life are symbolized in being buried under the water and raised up out of the water.
We also practice baptism by immersion because this is what the word actually means.
Baptism means to Immerse
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Our English word “Baptism” is a transliteration of the Greek word “baptizo” and the definition of baptizo is “to immerse, submerge; to make overwhelmed (i.e. fully wet)”
Because that is what the word actually means and because of what it is actually symbolizing (the death, burial and resurrection of Christ), and because that is what we see in God’s word (people going down into the water and coming up out of the water), and our desire to be true to God’s word, is why we practice baptism by immersion.
One last question we are sometimes asked regarding baptism is
Why don’t we baptize babies?
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That is because
Baptism is for Believers in Jesus
A baby can’t make the decision to believe. Baptism is only for those who believe and have received Jesus as Savior.
We see in Acts, when Philip shared the gospel with the Ethiopian Eunuch and wanted to be baptized, listen to what he says.
Acts 8:36-38
36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?" (and some later manuscripts have Philip replying in verse 37 that "If you believe with all your heart, you may." The eunuch answered, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."
Belief is a requirement to be baptized. Babies can’t make that choice to believe.
I would argue though that relatively young children can realize their need for Christ and receive Him as Savior. You don’t need to know every doctrine of the Bible, just that you have sinned and then received Jesus by believing in Him, that He is God in the flesh and that he died for your sins and resurrected from the dead.
Conclusion
Do you believe that?
Have you believed in and received Jesus Christ as your Savior by confessing your belief in who He is and what He did?
If you haven’t you need to.
If you have, then you should be baptized.
And there is never any better time than the present.
We are doing baptisms after our second service today.
Maybe you are here today and have believed in Jesus as your Savior and believe that you should be baptized but you are afraid to.
I want to encourage you to take be strong and courageous and take this step of obedience to the Lord’s command. You will not regret it. You never regret obedience to the Lord’s commands.
If this is something you desire to do today, you can talk with myself, or Billy or Tom Newton or Jim Coyle and express your desire to follow the Lord in baptism and tell uswhen you have received Jesus as your Savior and your belief in who Jesus is (the Son of God, God in the flesh) and what He did (He died for your sins and rose from the dead).
First Service
Since it is the first service, you can run home and get a change of clothes and come back for the end of the next service.
Second service
If you are worried about getting your clothes wet, it is nice out and your clothes will dry and we have towels you can borrow.
If you are here today, however, and have not yet received Jesus Christ as your Savior, why don’t you do that now and then follow him in obedience to baptism just like they did in the early church.
If you have never consciously confessed your belief in Jesus to the Lord, then pray along with me and receive Him by confessing your belief to Him.
Romans 10:9 - if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Let’s pray
If you have received Jesus as Savior today, please let us know by marking that on the back of your connection card. Even if you are not being baptized today, we want to help you continue to grow in your relationship with the Lord becoming the disciple He wants us to be.
Let’s stand and worship the One who saves us and calls us into relationship to Himself.
Worship Him today in song and in obedience.
Let’s sing
